Jim Roe of Roe Entertainment, based in Owensboro, Kentucky, has announced the addition of Rounder Recording artists, The Freight Hoppers, an old time string band, to his already exciting roster of bluegrass bands.

Those patient fans who had the pleasure of seeing the fabled Freight Hoppers perform from 1992 to 2002 will certainly know what a sight and sound it is to witness the infectious groove of fiddle and banjo combination driven by David Bass and Frank Lee. These guys set a new benchmark on the circuit back in the mid 1990s. When the band took a break, many wondered if that hallmark sound would be heard again.

Now, Lee and Bass are back and have brought in Thomas Bailey on guitar and vocals and Isaac Deal on upright bass and vocals. With the two original members reunited and joined by Bailey, whose undistilled powerhouse baritone vocal range enriches the sound, and Deal, whose ardent high lead and tenor voice holds the line and traverses the music’s authentic spirit, a string band has been created to rival the best that ever kicked up dust. During the 1990s, The Freight Hoppers became the most popular modern day old time music string band in the world. The Freight Hoppers recorded two critically acclaimed albums that climbed into the Top 20 of Billboard’s Americana music charts: ‘Where’d You Come From, Where’d You Go?’ (released in 1996) and ‘Waiting on the Gravy Train’ (1998). They toured extensively in the U.S., Canada and Europe, appeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and elevated the popularity of old time music all over the world. With performances at concerts and festivals and radio airplay, they shook up the music landscape and created a new audience of traditional music fans.

Their music turned people on and their trail blazed the way for other successful string bands to follow their lead. The reshaped band will elaborate on their trademark sound by drawing upon their personal musical rapport to make a sonic hue that refracts their inspirations and love of Southern American, gospel, blues, punk and, folk music. A new album on Rounder Records is already in production and eagerly awaited.

And so a new chapter begins as The Freight Hoppers ride again.

Jim Roe has this to say about the band …….

“The Freight Hoppers have such a good reputation on and off the stage. I can tell they really have made a lot of friends and fans over the years. I mention their name and people genuinely get very excited that they are together performing again.

You have to love their energy. Their old time sound is different from the other acts on my roster which will help me get into places I haven’t booked before and I believe I can help them get into festivals they didn’t get a chance to play the first time around.”

In addition toThe Freight Hoppers, Roe Entertainment represents The SteelDrivers, Lonesome River Band, Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass and Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper.

Here’s a YouTube clip of them performing The Train That Carried My Girl From Town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujLqAqspVeo

Here is a great YouTube video of Crooked Still and The Infamous Stringdusters jamming at the Strawberry Music Festival earlier this year. It was created and narrated by Dan Ruby of FestivalPreview.com.

Both groups back up Crooked Still vocalist Aoife O’Donovan on Look On And Cry, and then jam out on a spirited version of Old Joe Clark. Ruby also interviews Aoife, with those segments interspersed throughout.

Since this performance was captured before recent personnel changes in both groups, you’ll see Chris Eldridge with the ‘Dusters and Rushad Eggleston with Crooked Still. If you’ve not witnessed Eggleston’s manic cello live, you’ll want to get a good look at him here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk-GUMN7RFU

Here’s a YouTube clip of Toby Keith singing Please Come Home For Christmas on the Ellen show December 6.

Rob Ickes is prominently featured on dobro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1BoXgzC4f0

Rounder Records has created a mini-documentary and interview with Rhonda Vincent to help build interest in her upcoming January release, Good Thing Going.

Rhonda speaks about how she came to write several of the songs on the new CD, and how much she enjoyed being able to have the time in the studio to complete the project without budget concerns, now that she has a professional recording studio in her home.

You can ever see her working up arrangements in the studio, along with Andy Leftwich, Bryan Sutton and Ron Stewart.

The eight and a half minute video is posted on YouTube, or you can watch it below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xByTE5TmzY

We heard recently from Jeremy Chapman of The Chapmans, who wanted to share a video bio of the band that they have posted on YouTube.

It runs just over minutes and is entitled The Family Business. In the video, the boys talk about how they came to become a family band, with the interview segment inter cut with clips and photos of the early days when John, Jeremy and Jason were barely big enough to hold a guitar. The documentary-style presentation carries us through the band’s emergence as a serious bluegrass act, culminating with them being named as the Emerging Artist of the Year in 2002 by the IBMA.

Jeremy says that the project just dropped into their laps.

“Around May of ‘07 we were approached by a couple of Film Students from Missouri State University who had seen us perform not long before, and were interested in doing a documentary on the band for a film project. So we set up a small concert at a local music shop and then had a pretty informal interview afterwards. It was definitely a lot of fun to go through all the old photo albums and home videos to get them some background on the band. I forgot we were once that little.

In the end though I think we were all impressed with how interesting they made us look.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfgcU09Bb4U

Jeremy mentioned that The Chapmans have concluded their agreement with Pinecastle Records, and are now shopping for a new label partner. They also recently signed with booking agency Sound Kitchen Productions, which Jeremy says has been a great fit.

He asks that fans and friends keep up with them via the band’s MySpace page.

Wechter Guitars has posted two new videos on YouTube, both of which show reso-master Rob Ickes test driving a new 6535R Wechter/Scheerhorn resonator guitar - the Rob Ickes signature model. The video was shot in a hotel room at last month’s IBMA convention in Nashville, and has Rob playing a new guitar, while discussing it with Abe Wechter and Tim Scheerhorn, who jointly designed and build these instruments.

The Ickes model is based on Rob’s custom Scheerhorn with the bodies and necks made in China, and then assembled with Scheerhorn components at the Wechter shop in Michigan. While the heralded Scheerhorn guitars sell for several thousand dollars and require waiting periods of two to three years, the Wechter/Scheerhorn hybrids can be had for less than $1000 and shipped right away.

Here is the first of the two YouTube clips, the other found on the Wechter site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf3wr8GDb10

Regular readers of The Bluegrass Blog know that we always like to highlight the efforts of young bluegrass musicians - and the people who assist them in learning to play. We have a number of stories we would like to share along those lines.

Last year around this time, we ran a piece about Scott Gates and Pacific Ocean Bluegrass, a group of California teens who donated a portion of their CD sales to help fund scholarships for young pickers to attend the California Bluegrass Association’s annual Music Camp.

The camp is held in conjunction with CBA’s Father’s Day Festival each June, where they also host a Kids On Bluegrass event. Players age 3 to 18 are allowed to audition to be part of a group performance at the festival, with coaching and rehearsals held during the year before each show.

Several videos from this year’s Kids On Bluegrass show have been posted on YouTube where you can see a gaggle of eager young pickers joining Rhonda Vincent on stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBASL-hcBWg

On a related Youth Bluegrass Movement note… ukbluegrass.com has a story up about Miles Apart, a group of five teen aged British bluegrass musicians. They discuss how they all came to discover and learn to play bluegrass music, and what they hope to accomplish in the future.

Our own local paper, The Roanoke Times, has a piece this week about another young bluegrass band, The Cana Ramblers. They are a family band featuring three winners of the Galax Old Fiddlers Convention youth competition.

Read the article by Ralph Berrier on the paper’s web site, and check out some photos and audio of the Ramblers at Galax in a multimedia slide show.

Newsweek and MSNBC.com have posted an online feature on The Carolina Chocolate Drops, the black string band making waves at festivals all over the US this summer. Their sound is a mix of jug band and old time music, but all heavily influenced by the contributions that US black and African folk artists made to Appalachian musical culture.

“People ask us, ‘Are y’all from the mountains?’,” says fiddler Justin Robinson, a North Carolina native. “What they’re really asking is, ‘Why the hell are you playing this?’” His answer: “It’s a reclamation.” Robinson, fellow Carolinian Rhiannon Giddens and Arizona-born multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons met two years ago at the annual Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C. Under the tutelage of fiddler Joe Thompson, one of the last surviving practitioners of the black fiddle style that once provided the soundtrack to North Carolina’s hilly Piedmont region, the Carolina Chocolate Drops learned their roots and honed their chops. Last month they released their first album, an infectious hoedown of a record called “Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind.” Now they’re one of the hottest tickets on the old-time and folk-music festival circuit. “In the black community most of the time they’re shocked we’re doing this,” says Flemons. “A lot of black people like country music and old-time music, but they can’t relate because the people playing it don’t look like them.”

The full article - with two live performance video clips - can be found on the MSNBC/Newsweek web site. There is also a lengthy interview with the band posted at RealCountryMusic.org.

You can hear audio samples from their CD on The Carolina Chocolate Drops MySpace page.

They also have a YouTube clip of themselves competing at the Mt. Airy Fiddler’s Convention this past spring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHLwZg0KfNs

The Steep Canyon Rangers have put together an 8 minute video bio to introduce themselves, and their upcoming Rebel release, Lovin’ Pretty Women, to the YouTube audience. The video includes a live performance of the title track from the new project, a catchy and humorous band original that mixes traditional bluegrass and old time elements.

The video closes with the audio from Kuykendall, one of two instrumentals from Lovin’ Pretty Women, which one would expect might be a tribute to Pete Kuykendall, publisher of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine, former member of The Country Gentlemen, and a bluegrass mandolinist.

To this date, we’ve not found any audio samples online from the new CD, though they will surely appear on the band’s web site before long.

You catch watch the video bio on YouTube, or enjoy it here below.

Some time ago a documentary film about the Station Inn was produced by a friend of mine in Nashville. That film has yet to find it’s way to DVD, but it is in the process. Nathan emailed me yesterday to let me know he had posted a trailer for the documentary online at YouTube.com.

He is still seeking some financial backing for the DVD release, but said he hopes to release the project soon, and eventually even see it broadcast on PBS.

The video features a great many bluegrass performers including appearances by Vince Gill, Del McCoury, Tim O’Brien, Peter Rowan and Vassar Clements. If you’re interested, take 4 minutes and give it a watch.

Compass Records has launched a YouTube channel to promote the many fine artists who record for the label. They intend to feature music videos, concert footage and even funny moments with Compass artists.

The first video is a live performance from this May’s StringNation festival in Camden, NJ featuring Darol Anger’s Republic Of Strings.

The Compass folks ask that anyone with video that might be suitable for their YouTube channel to please contact them so that it can be included.

Enjoy Republic Of Strings’ version of Duck River Song below.

We recently told you about the law suit filed by David Grisman’s Dawg Music (Acoustic Disc) label against online video sharing site YouTube.com. It appears that’s not the only lawsuit he’s filed recently. He’s also suing Universal Music Group and Warner Music for contracting to sell his music online through digital download services without first consulting him, or paying the expected royalties.

What’s more, he’s extended the suit to include eight online download services which have distributed the music provided to them by Universal and Warner. The eight include Apple’s iTunes, AOL Music Now, Buy.com, Microsoft’s MSN.com, Napster, RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, WalMart.com, and Yahoo Music. He finds them guilty by association. That’s going to be a hard sell in my opinion because these services always pay to the label, who then distributes royalties to the artist. It seems to me his complaint should be with the two labels he signed contracts with to distribute his music.

The filing claims that “irreparable injury” has been done to Dawg Music by this situation and Grisman is seeking $150,000 for every work whose copyright was violated. Taken as a whole and spread across all the defendants, this would equal millions of dollars.

It seems Grisman has a contract with Universal and Warner, but his complaint is that they took on themselves authority that wasn’t granted to them by the contract. I’ve seen some pretty vague wording in some record contracts offered to artists by the labels that would give the label the right to “all future media” or some such. This could be one of the cases. I think Grisman needs to focus on his contract with the labels in question. I really don’t think he has any case against the online retail outlets.

In the first case I’m aware of involving a bluegrass artist, mandolinist David Grisman has filed suit against online video sharing website, YouTube. From large media conglomerates such as Viacom to soccer leagues, many have filed similar suits since Google’s recent acquisition of YouTube.

Grisman’s lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of cash for copyright infringement, as well as a court order forcing YouTube to comply with copyright laws in the future. Grisman and company seek to pursue the case not only for themselves, but also for other independent musicians and publishers.

YouTube’s response to such cases has historically been that they always comply with requests to remove unauthorized material when asked to do so by the copyright owners, and are therefore protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The suit was filed May 10, 2007 in a San Francisco federal court.

Some have pointed out the irony of someone who has always encouraged fans to bootleg his live performances now suing a video sharing site, but Grisman draws a distinction between fan bootlegs and “Google distribution.” Personally I don’t see much difference myself, since the fan bootlegs invariably end up online where they are distributed worldwide in the same way that YouTube clips are. But ultimately, as a copyright owner, it’s his right to decide when and where to allow use of his copyrighted works. But, you might ask, was a lawsuit really necessary?

Here’s part of the text from the suit.

they [Google and YouTube] deliberately refuse to take meaningful steps to deter the rampant infringing activity readily apparent on YouTube which would, in turn, have a negative impact on the advertising and other reviews and other value achieved through the large volume of traffic on the YouTube Web site.

Essentially the difference, as Grisman and company seem to be drawing it, is that YouTube, and by extension Google, is making money on the site where fans trading bootlegs aren’t. At least that’s the thought process, and I can go along with that. If he’s willing to give away, so to speak, his copyright by allowing fans to tape, that is different from someone seeking to monazite his copyrights without his consent.

I understand how he can be ok with live show taping, but not ok with YouTube video sharing. Other copyright owners might be ok with it though (I know some who are). So why try to take that choice away by forcing YouTube into a business model that wouldn’t allow it? Why not just ask YouTube to remove your works and, assuming they do, leave it at that?

The folks at Wechter Guitars have put together a video called Crafting Wechter Guitars, shot by award-winning photojournalist Mark Bugnaski. It is available for viewing (in two parts) on YouTube.

The video shows craftsmen at work in the Wechter shop, and is presented in a documentary style, without narration. It runs just over six minutes in total. There is also a Wechter slide show presentation on YouTube.

Wechter makes a variety of hand crafted acoustic guitars, as well as Scheerhorn-licensed resonator guitars and the Rob Ickes signature model Scheerhorn/Wechter guitar.

There is a new video from The Infamous Stringdusters up on YouTube.

It was shot by Craig Havighurst while the band was touring in Colorado in April, and shows them doing an in-studio performance of Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind at KSUT in Durango, CO. Here’s how the ‘Dusters describe it on their site:

It features some serious picking (everyone seriously shreds) some serious singing and some full on clowning on each other (in the middle of the song I looked down and the Grasshoppers record was in the rack next to me).

Craig also has a higher resolution version of the video on his site, String Theory Media.

Bass man Travis Book also shares a serious mea culpa on the band site, having just recently crashed their new touring vehicle.

“Van was in our possession only 2 days before I smashed it up. Cut someone off going for an exit and got t-boned… now I’m in the doghouse with the band, so if you wouldn’t mind buying a few extra copies of our CD to offset the deductible, it’d be appreciated.”

How’s that for a novel sales pitch?

We posted in late March about a CD from John Prine and Mac Wiseman, Standard Songs for Average People. It was released last week (4/24) on Prine’s Oh Boy Records, and there is an excerpt on YouTube of an interview with John and Mac from the Cowboy Jack Clement radio show on Sirius.

A review of the Prine/Wiseman CD appeared in the April 26 edition of the Nashville Scene, written by Michael McCall.

“On their new album of duets, Standard Songs for Average People, these two veterans don’t harmonize as much as bring out the other’s distinctive vocal strengths. They’re more apt to trade lines than join together, but they sound delighted either way. This isn’t a duo set up as a star-power venture, nor is it meant as an artistic exercise to stretch their talents. It simply sounds like two well-traveled guys—Prine is 60, Wiseman, 81—sharing a love of old songs and feeling inspired by each other’s company.”

Read the full review at NashvilleScene.com.

You can hear audio samples from Standard Songs for Average People in the iTunes Music Store.

After teaching at Sore Fingers Week in England earlier this month, Rob Ickes, Noam Pikelny and Casey Driessen did some touring in the UK as The Nashville Acoustic All Stars.

The folks at ukbluegrass.com posted yesterday with links to three video clips on YouTube from a performance of theirs in Scotland. They were shot with two cameras, and offer a nice look at these fine musicians up close in a loose, jam-like setting.

The songs from this show (at the Polish Club, Kirkcaldy, Fife) are Sally In The Garden, Aint’ Gonna Work Tomorrow and Foggy Mountain Rock.

There is one other clip from this tour on YouTube, shot at the Ex-Servicemans Club, Helsby in England. This one has the boys playing a rip-roarin’ version of Groundspeed - which also includes a couple of choice quips from the guys at the start.

If you didn’t catch Shawn Lane, Wayne Taylor and Tim Stafford of Blue Highway singing the pre-race National Anthem at the Bristol Motor Speedway on April 24, you can watch a web video of them on YouTube.

They had been invited to sing before the Sharpie Mini 300, and offered up a fine version of The Star Spangled Banner.

Watch the video at YouTube.

We posted a heads-up when The Grascals were scheduled to appear on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson on February 12, performing with their friend Dierks Bentley. They were on to assist Dierks with his song, Prodigal Son’s Prayer, from his latest CD, Long Trip Alone - as they did on the recording.

That show is set to re-air tonight (3/13), so a second chance is in the offing for Grascals fans who missed it the first time around. The Late, Late Show airs at 12:35 p.m. (ET/PT) on CBS.

Their performance is also available on YouTube, for online viewing.

Our friends at The Bluegrass Ireland Blog found a terrific video on YouTube that is sure to be a treat for bluegrass mandolin fans.

It features Jethro Burns performing a talking blues tribute to the greats of the mandolin, with able assistance from Red Rector. Jethro and Red each take a turn with a solo, and are joined at the end by a very special guest.

It’s a classic clip, and a great reminder of what a clever performer Jethro was - as well as a fine picker.

Find the clip on YouTube.